1. 24 hour election coverage. I've got news about the Mccain-Obama situation coming at me from Twitter, Friend Feed, CNN, Rachel Maddow,
Chris Matthews, and Fox News (thanks to my multi-news channel that lets
me watch all the major stations at the same time), the local Hawaii
ten-page newspaper, Alternet updates on my Blackberry, a constant
stream of posts on my Facebook page, huge Hawaii for Obama posters at
the supermarket, and even Tenzin. Right this second, he is in the
bathtub singing, "Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama."

2. The growing hostility. I was just speaking in the bible
belt, the midwest, the west coast, and the northeast. Among many
moments of difficulty, an airline attendant looked me up and down when
I asked for a cup of water, then told me there wasn't enough to give
me. At a hotel in Tennessee, a family of five asked me huffily to show
them to their room.

When I asked why there was a "No Firearms Allowed" sign on the front
door of a hotel in another Southern state, a policeman stood up from
his post in the lobby, put his hand on his gun, and asked the woman
behind the desk if she was having a problem with me.

And then, last night when I got home, I heard what I can only describe
as Commando-style yelling coming from across the yard. I heard "Go!"
and "Aim!" and "Move out!" Was it a television? A white supremacist
group doing an exercise for the day after the election? I wish I could
say definitively that it was the former, but since I've been hearing a
lot of bagpipe playing over yonder, and checking in with the SPLC on the staggering rise of white hate groups, I'm not so sure.

The truth is, the backlash on this necessary step forward is
going to be monumental. I recently saw a documentary on the civil war.
One historian said the North won the war, but the South won
Reconstruction-- black folks were emancipated, but they were also
severely brutalized and disempowered shortly thereafter.
I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying Obama supporters of all
colors need to get ready. Now is the time for all of us to vote, and
also prepare.

Today,
my friends, I am going to take some time off to rest and recover. I'm
going to lie in bed with a book after I post this and try not to think
about the economy. I am going to send messages of reassurance to all of
the people in the world terrified of change that we will make it
through if we can be open to what is rather than attached to what was,
and I am going to check all of the locks on my doors and windows to
make sure they are secure.

I'm also going to try, try, try, to
give Tenzin my undivided attention for at least thirty minutes. And
that includes being with him without thinking about the ten thousand
things on my to-do list and what the world might look like at the end
of next month.

And one more thing. The Dalai Lama says a guaranteed way to
feel better is to think about others more than yourself. So I'm going
to ask how you're doing with all of this. How are you managing these
final days to E-day?

I almost always read for inspiration. I’m on a perpetual hunt for books
that make me want to sit down and write my own. I can’t believe they
are so hard to find—there are millions of books, after all. But to find
my books, the ones that call my name, is a major deal. Once found, I
read these books in bed at two in the morning, take them on airplanes
again and again, and get teary-eyed remembering who I was the first
time I cracked their pages.

Like everyone else, I've been thinking about the economy. This week I've been identifying with my paternal grandmother, who grew up during the Depression. All us grandchildren used to laugh when she emptied the sugar packets from restaurant tables into her purse, and moved her money from bank to bank to get a free toaster or portable television for opening an account.

On my mother's side, my uncles rolled pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters every couple of months, and then took the rolls to the bank to change into dollars. My mother and her siblings were all about paying for things outright, too. Credit was for people who didn't understand the system, who lacked restraint, who would one day lose what they owned because if you owed on it and couldn't pay, well, that was that.

And they had already, as black sharecroppers in the Jim Crow south, lost enough.

So I'm wondering how we can use the current economic crisis as motivation to change our generation's behaviors for good. If my son can look back on this moment as the turning point in species sustainability, this economic nightmare will have officially earned a silver lining.

You all might be way ahead of me, but here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Macro: Let's push for what Van Jones calls the "green collar economy" in his book of the same title. We can use the current energy crisis as the impetus to completely transform our domestic business model. Instead of an ever-expanding prison industrial complex, let's have an ever=expanding environmental industrial complex. We can create American jobs, train skilled workers, and propel our nation to surplus and eco-sustainability without leaving at-risk youth, working class people whose jobs have gone overseas, or regular middle-class Americans behind.

Micro: I'm slowly acclimating my family to the idea of getting our power from the sun and wind. We use solar panels during the day for showers, but I've also got solar chargers for the Blackberry and I'm working on getting one for the laptop. Solar chargers have a long way to go, and at the moment the cost benefit isn't there, but the shift in mindset is crucial. It's mind-blowing to see it takes a full day of direct sun to charge my Blackberry.

2. Macro: Take greater accountability for our health so we don't have to rely on the medical industrial complex for wellness. More than exercising and eating right, this means incorporating exercise into our workplaces--like the Google campus and so many other future-forward companies have--and turning our mind on while we exercise. Mind and body are one, and real health is more than the absence of illness.

Micro: I'm looking into HSA's, or Health Savings Accounts. I've just written how they work ten different ways and none of them made sense, so I'm just going to give you this link to start your research. Switching from regular private health insurance to a tax-free Health Saving Account invested in the market over the next twenty years could reduce health insurance costs by more than half--and help build a nest-egg for the future.

3. Macro: Develop a better relationship to credit. The US is 300 billion dollars and counting in debt to the Chinese government alone. Now is the time to get into CASH. I know Suze Orman has been telling us this forever (and so have our parents), but it seems to make even more sense right now, as the crisis swirled around a potential credit freeze.

Micro: It's actually liberating. I was zipping through the airport last week and instead of whipping out the plastic, I handed over the green. It felt GREAT. I knew I wouldn't see some crazy airport charges on my statement, long after the mags and bottle of water had been consumed. Of course, that doesn't mean shutting down credit cards--we still need those, but it does mean using them less.

4. Macro: Re-thinking the way we look at food, in terms of basic proteins and healthy fats.

Micro: When I heard the price of grain was skyrocketing and countries are facing rice shortages, I bought huge sacks of rice for my house. Also cases of beans. Rice and beans are a perfect protein. If the economy collapses and food can't make it to the island, or the fuel tax on imported goods is out of this world, we could eat rice and beans for weeks and maintain good health. Throw on a little Bragg's and an avocado from the tree and you've got yourself a perfect meal.

I should mention that when I raised this around the dinner table, everyone's eyebrows went up--they think I'm extreme, but as far as I'm concerned, better to be safe than sorry.

And finally,

5. Macro: This is a time for giving what you can, receiving what's coming your way, and believing in amazing abundance.

Micro: I've been going through closets and putting everything I don't need, use, or deem essential into bags to drop at shelters, clothing recyclers, and anywhere else they may do some good. Even and especially "the good stuff" because, well, who doesn't deserve the good stuff?

I'm also working on getting better at receiving the non-material essentials--love, advice, gratitude, admiration, affection, hugs, you name it, if it spreads goodwill, I'll take it. Even if the sky doesn't fall, and it looks like it probably won't, there's no better time to remember that true wealth is being loved, understood, and respected for who you are.

This
is for all the beautiful people who came to hear me at St Louis
University last night. It's a great follow-up piece to my talk: Barack
Obama, Al Gore, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Revolutionizing
Masculinity for the 21st Century.

Like many biracial Americans of my generation, my parents met in the
tumultous cultural revolution of the 1960s. They married when it was
illegal for people of different races to do so, and continued to challenge
entrenched assumptions about race by having me. It was dangerous work.The Klan threatened our interracial family in Mississippi often. My father's Jewish mother disowned him for marrying a black woman.